


Time (The Persistence of Memory)

by alchemicink



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Basically everything is a metaphor, Clocks, M/M, writing fic based on a painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4955137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemicink/pseuds/alchemicink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yaotome Hikaru woke up one morning and couldn’t remember the last two years of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time (The Persistence of Memory)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for [Project Ateliers](http://ateliers.livejournal.com/), a multi-fandom challenge to write something inspired by some sort of art. I chose to use Salvador Dali's [The Persistence of Memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory/). But I also took inspiration from HSJ's song "Time." There are also vague, vague, vague things inspired by Inception and Alice in Wonderland. In addition, there's one scene that's a direct parody of an old Abbott and Costello sketch. A link is provided in the end notes. 
> 
> I've been working on this story for six months and it ended up twice as long as I expected. I hope you all enjoy the experience of Hikaru's journey as he tries to figure out the mystery.

Yaotome Hikaru woke up one morning and couldn’t remember the last two years of his life. 

Well, not exactly. He remembered his name and his job. He remembered his family in Sendai. But there were gaps. He couldn’t remember visiting his parents during last New Years. He couldn’t remember what he did in the evenings, on the weekends, on vacation. Everything was just a blank. Like his memory was a wide sheet of paper and someone had punched a large hole in it. 

Upon further investigation after waking up, he realized that it wasn’t just some _thing_ he was missing but some _one_. He walked around his apartment and noticed the empty spaces. The spot where another toothbrush had rested beside his. The mildewy ring in the shower where a different bottle of shampoo had been. The bookshelf in the living room where certain books had been removed, leaving Hikaru’s haphazardly falling over onto the wooden shelf that hadn’t even had time to begin collecting dust. The indent marks on the carpet in the corner of the room where something large had once rested. Perhaps a piece of furniture, like a table maybe? Hikaru couldn’t be sure.

And in the kitchen, his photo collage attached to the fridge by his tacky collection of magnets was missing pieces. Photos had just vanished and some of them had been ripped in half, leaving only Hikaru’s face behind, smiling alone. He couldn’t even remember taking those pictures.

Whoever the other person had been, he was undoubtedly important to Hikaru. The questions, the uncertainty, the emptiness chewed at the corners of Hikaru’s mind. It was a mystery he needed to solve. Those memories belonged to him and he wanted them back, wherever they were. Whether they were happy or sad, he couldn’t live with the unknown. 

So Hikaru turned to the simplest thing he knew: the internet. He was feeling the sharp ache of loss but there was no one to turn to. The computer’s unnatural light cast shadows in his dimly-lit, curtain-drawn bedroom as Hikaru typed different phrases into the Google search bar. _How to remember things? Where did my memories go? Is forgetting whole years normal? How do I recover lost memories?_

The results were unsatisfactory. Pages and pages of suggestions. Worthless suggestions. That is, until he clicked on a link to “Dr. Yabu Kota, Memory Physician.” It sounded shady and Hikaru was a skeptic, but his other option was visiting a fortune teller and he believed in those even less. Besides, the address for Dr. Yabu’s office was listed only a few neighborhoods away. It wouldn’t be too far by train. 

Desperate and tired of searching, Hikaru called and made an appointment for Monday. He climbed into his bed with thoughts still racing through his mind. Did he used to share that bed with the missing person? Did they curl up close and whisper stories of their day and quiet wishes of sweet dreams? Hikaru buried his face into the pillows and breathed deeply, but there was no lingering scent to jog his memory. Only the smell of freshly washed linens. 

He did not sleep that night.

\---

 

Dr. Yabu’s clinic was wedged between a laundromat and a pawn shop. It was a tiny building, easily overlooked, with dusty windows that looked like they hadn’t been washed in years. The sign, _Dr. Yabu Kota, Memory Physician_ , hung above the front door. Hikaru scoffed at the sheet of paper taped to the door that read _by appointment only_ written in what could only be a doctor’s messy handwriting.

Normally, Hikaru would have been concerned about a place like this, but he hadn’t slept in three days and that made it easier to ignore the warning alarms blaring in his brain. The bell above the door jingled as he walked inside.

The waiting room was empty. Just a few chairs and a couple of magazines that might have been sitting there for a few years. Hikaru walked up to the reception window but there was no one around. Tentatively, he tapped the bell on the counter, hoping that would catch someone’s attention. He supposed he still had time to just leave and forget the whole thing, but then a man in a doctor’s white lab coat walked in and up to the window.

“Why hello there,” he said, opening the glass window and giving Hikaru a bright smile. “You must be Mr. Yaotome.” 

“Uh, just Hikaru is fine.” The man looked to be around the same age as him, so it was weird to be called so formally. 

“Nice to meet you. I’m Yabu Kota.” The doctor stuck his hand through the open reception window for Hikaru to shake. Hikaru noted his firm grip but also the friendliness in his eyes. He didn’t really look old enough to be a doctor. “I have some paperwork for you to sign first,” Yabu continued, “…if I can find it…”

He glanced around the office and then pulled open a few filing cabinet drawers. If the doctor couldn’t remember stuff like paperwork, then this wasn’t looking too promising. But before Hikaru could escape, Dr. Yabu found the papers.

“It’s just the usual medical history and insurance stuff,” Dr. Yabu assured him. This didn’t make Hikaru feel any better because with the gap in his memory, he couldn’t be sure he didn’t have any medical issues from the past two years. How would he know? He questioned everything now. 

Once he was done, Dr. Yabu led him to an examination room in the back. Inside, there was a reclinable chair like he’d seen countless times at the dentist office but without all the tools and gadgets usually attached. Dr. Yabu pulled up a rolling chair and grabbed his clipboard. 

“So tell me what you need help with. Short-term loss? Long-term? Trying to recover a traumatic childhood incident?” 

“I just can’t remember most of the last two years.”

“Oh good. Not childhood then.” Yabu made a few notes. “Those are always the most difficult.” He listened as Hikaru explained a bit more about the situation. 

“Okay then, let me ask you a few questions. Have you had a recent head injury?”

Hikaru automatically ran his fingers over his scalp, checking for any cuts and bruises even though he already knew that nothing hurt. “I don’t remember any,” he answered. 

Yabu nodded and made more notes. “Any drug use?”

“No,” Hikaru immediately answered. He knew that one for sure at least. 

“Well that’s a good thing.” Yabu flipped the page to write down more stuff. “We should be able to recover your missing memories.” 

“You will?” Hikaru wondered how someone who couldn’t remember where he’d stashed his paperwork would be able to do that.

“I’m sure the memories are still there. They’re just being blocked by something.” Yabu set his clipboard in his lap. “This might make it easier to understand. Imagine that the inside of your brain is a room. Your newest furniture sits inside, looking all nice and shiny, while your old furniture has fabric thrown over top of it, like a protective covering since you don’t use it anymore. The furniture is, of course, your memories. Something happened that threw a sheet over the last two years for you. But that doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. We’ve just got to uncover everything and then you’ll be back to normal.”

“So… what you’re saying is… my memories are furniture and I lost them because my brain got messy?”

“Well not _literally._ It’s just a metaphor.” 

“Did you even go to medical school?”

“Yes,” Dr. Yabu answered brightly, not even annoyed by the questioning of his qualifications. “Anyway, let’s get started!” 

Hikaru cast his eyes warily around the room. “You’re not gonna, like, stick me with needles or something, right?” 

“No, of course not,” Yabu said. “You’re just going to sleep.” He dimmed the lights and settled back into his rolling chair. 

“I haven’t slept in three days,” Hikaru announced grumpily. This was beginning to feel like a waste of time. If this crackpot doctor thought the answer was as simple as sleeping, then Hikaru thought he should ask for a refund.

“That’ll make this easier then,” Dr. Yabu answered without any concern. He rolled over to a mechanical device against the wall that Hikaru hadn’t noticed before and pressed a few buttons. “Is it dark enough in here for you?” he asked Hikaru. “I used to light candles and incense to make things comfier for my patients but then I never could stop sneezing. The noise was distracting.”

“It’s fine,” Hikaru muttered. He couldn’t believe Dr. Yabu ever had any other patients before.

“It might help to think of something soothing like, I dunno, fresh laundry or cute kittens.”

“I hate cats.”

“I’m going to ignore your tone because I know you’re sleep-deprived. I’m sure you’re a wonderfully pleasant man in real life.” Dr. Yabu gave him a radiant smile before returning to adjusting the settings on the machine.

Hikaru chose to ignore that comment. He watched Yabu put some earplugs in before he pressed one more button and the machine started to hum steadily. Yabu rolled back over, his chair making a squeaky noise only Hikaru could now hear.

“I’ll be taking notes while you’re out,” Dr. Yabu explained while pointing to his clipboard, speaking a bit louder because he couldn’t hear himself. “All you have to do is close your eyes and imagine a door. The machine will do the rest. When you’re done, just visualize the door again and go back through.”

Hikaru was still skeptical but his eyes were somehow starting to feel heavy. The constant hum from the machine felt like it was burrowing into his brain and rattling around the edges of his skull. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to relax. He was beginning to feel lighter, like he was almost floating away from his body. He did as he was told and pictured a door. Nothing fancy. Just a solid brown door. Feeling a little hesitant, he reached out and grabbed the handle. It felt real enough even though he knew it was just an illusion in his brain. Slowly he opened the door, walked through, and entered the world inside. 

The landscape in front of him was vast and mostly barren. It was all sand and rocks, all a nice dull orangey-brown color. There were cliffs in the distance, looking lonely in their tall magnificence. Above him, the sky was a light shade of blue, but as he looked further, the sky faded into a lighter shade of the orangey-brown of the sky. It was almost like the sky and ground were reflecting each other in some sort of weird way.

“Are you lost?” a voice asked from behind him.

Hikaru turned to see a guy standing there surrounded by clocks. The guy looked normal enough but the clocks looked like they were melting. None of them were circular like regular clocks. Instead, they were stretched and twisted. Their outlines fluid and changing as they floated in the air.

“I’m not lost. I just… don’t know where I am,” Hikaru said. When he looked around again, the clocks were everywhere, filling in spaces they hadn’t been before. It almost made his brain hurt as he tried to figure out where they kept coming from and how they could float. “Who are you?”

“Takaki Yuya. Keeper of the clocks,” the guy answered. He plucked one out of the air and laid it on a bare outstretched branch of a dead-looking tree nearby. The clock rippled like a sheet in the wind. 

“Keeper of the clocks?” Hikaru repeated. “What does that mean?”

Takaki gave him a deadpan _what do you think_ stare as he picked up another clock. The hands of the clock looked like they could drip off the side at any moment. Takaki smoothed the wrinkles out and gently laid that clock on the ground. 

“You came here for a reason,” he said, looking at Hikaru with intense eyes that seemed like they could pierce right through him. “What is it?”

“I…” Hikaru wasn’t sure how to explain. “…forgot someone important.” 

“Well then, you should probably start looking.” Takaki took a small clock and rolled it on the ground. It kept rolling away from them until it was finally out of sight. “You can slow down time but you can’t stop it. It just keeps going.” 

Hikaru wasn’t quite sure what those cryptic words meant, and he had no idea how to start his search. How would he even know his memories if he found them? He probably should have asked Dr. Yabu a few more questions before he started this whole thing. 

Takaki folded up a tiny pocket watch into a neat square and handed it to Hikaru. “Maybe just start over there.” He pointed lazily towards the cliffs and the lake beside them while Hikaru tucked the watch into his back pocket. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.

Hikaru walked towards the cliff with a determined gait that didn’t quite match how he felt. That feeling of being lost and confused pressed down on his shoulders, almost like an actual tangible weight. It didn’t take as long to reach the cliff as he was expecting it to. Perhaps the distance was an illusion like an oasis in a desert. But how could anything be an illusion in a world created by his own mind? It made his head hurt just trying to comprehend it. Nothing made sense.

When he arrived at the wide expansive lake at the bottom of the cliff, Hikaru was only slightly surprised to find a guy on the shore, carefully crafting a small rowboat.

“Are you the keeper of the boats?” Hikaru asked dryly because sarcasm was the only defense mechanism he had in this world. The guy looked up with friendly eyes and a bright smile as he laughed at the sudden question. His messy black hair kept getting swept around by the occasional gust of wind, but he didn’t seem to notice. 

“Well this is my boat, so I guess I’m the keeper of it,” he answered, gesturing proudly to the work-in-progress with his long thin arms. Only one side of the boat was covered with wooden slats so far, leaving the ribs exposed on the other side. The guy was in the process of sanding out the rough parts of the wood, smoothing everything out with his well-used sander.

“I’m Yuto,” he introduced himself as he put the sander back down and brushed away the sawdust from his clothes. “Can I help you with something?”

Hikaru frowned. “I’m here to find my lost memories, but I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t think you can help.” 

“Yeah, I don’t know anything about that.” Yuto began sanding the wood of his boat again, the scraping sound awkwardly punctuating the air. He paused and winced as a splinter got lodged in his finger. Hikaru watched as Yuto carefully tried to pull the little shard of wood out with his bare hands. The expression on Yuto’s face was one of extreme focus as frown lines cropped up on his forehead. There was a brief moment where Hikaru felt a flash of something strange. Like a bit of unexplained familiarity, but only from the action, not the person. But the feeling was gone as soon as Yuto managed to work the splinter free and he grinned triumphantly.

“So where do you think I should go?” Hikaru asked. 

“Hm…” Yuto pursed his lips and tapped the side of his temple while he thought about it. “Maybe you can ask Keito. He sees a lot of stuff. Maybe he can see what you’re missing.” 

Hikaru considered the suggestion. The boat builder didn’t look like he was going to be much help otherwise. “So where can I find this Keito guy?” 

Yuto pointed to the nearby cliff with his now splinter-free finger. “Over there. You’ll see him.” 

“Thanks for your help.” 

Hikaru left behind the boat builder, waving as he walked away. He followed the edge of the lake as it led him towards the rather imposing-looking cliff that dominated this portion of the landscape. It too was a shade of orangey-brown matching everything else around. The rockface was solid and looked well-worn from decades or maybe centuries of weather.

He could also see a guy—Keito, he assumed—climbing up the cliff without any sort of safety gear. He wasn’t too far up yet, so Hikaru stood at the bottom and called up to him. “Hello? Are you Keito?”

The guy, clad only in a tank top and shorts, looked down at him with a perplexed face, surprised to see another person.

“Yuto sent me to you,” Hikaru explained, still speaking loudly in the hopes that the wind wasn’t carrying his voice away. “I’m looking for something.”

Keito nodded and climbed back down, expertly finding each foot and handhold in the rough rocks without even having to search for them. “What are you looking for?” he asked once his feet were planted firmly back on solid ground. Hikaru could see the calluses on his hands from rock climbing along with well developed arm and leg muscles. 

“My memories,” Hikaru explained with a bit of hesitation. “Or well… a person.” He didn’t quite know how to describe it. He wasn’t even sure what it would look like when he found it. “Yuto said you see a lot of things.” 

Hikaru could see that Keito was a little shy. The other boy bit his lip for a moment while he thought of a response. Maybe he didn’t get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people out here. But before Hikaru went too far with his speculation, he remembered that this place only existed in his head. 

“I see a lot from the top of the cliff, but I don’t think it’s what you’re looking for. But you can climb up with me and check for yourself if you’d like.” He looked genuinely pained that he couldn’t really help any other way. 

Hikaru looked up at the steep cliff. The whole thing was just one rough jagged rock, leaving plenty of places to easily use as handholds and footholds. But it was so high. One wrong move, one slip of his finger, and he could plummet straight down to the ground. He supposed it wouldn’t kill him, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He doubted his missing memories were sitting at the top of the cliff anyway.

“No thanks,” he shook his head. “I think I’m going home.” 

“Maybe next time then? I’ll be here.” Keito reached out and pulled himself up the rock face a little ways. He turned to look back over his shoulder and added, “Keep the tempo steady.” And then he looked apologetic for being so cryptic before he resumed his climb.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Hikaru muttered. But he didn’t repeat his question to Keito since the other boy had already climbed too high up to talk to without shouting again. Hikaru understood the phrase. He played bass guitar and knew it meant he was supposed to keep the pace of the song even. He just didn’t understand why Keito had said it to him. They weren’t even talking about music and he couldn’t imagine that it had anything to do with climbing up the side of a cliff.

Hikaru just wanted to go home and give up for the day. He imagined a door just like Dr. Yabu had instructed him and waited for it to appear. Just a moment later, the same plain door materialized beside him. He opened it and stepped through, letting the world disintegrate around him.

He woke up back in the doctor’s office, still resting comfortably in the chair. The humming machine had been turned off and Dr. Yabu was still nearby, scratching out notes on his clipboard. When it didn’t look like Yabu would ever notice he was awake, Hikaru loudly cleared his throat. 

“Oh welcome back!” Dr. Yabu smiled. “I was just finishing up a game of Hangman with myself,” he said and held up his clipboard to show the word game he’d scribbled out on the paper. Apparently, he wasn’t very good at it.

“Aren’t you supposed to take notes on me or something?” Hikaru was annoyed. 

“What kind of notes can I take while you’re just sleeping? You’ve been lying still for an hour.” 

Hikaru narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you’re a real doctor?”

Dr. Yabu grinned. “It says _doctor_ on the front door, doesn’t it?”

Hikaru glared at him. “Well, I still don’t remember anything, so you’re not a good doctor.”

“Still grumpy, huh? Clearly you should have slept for another hour,” Yabu said, unfazed by the insult. He made a show of reorganizing all the papers on his clipboard. “I never said it would all come back during the first session. We’ll need a few more days at least. Or perhaps week or two.”

“Days? Weeks?” Hikaru didn’t want to spend _days_ doing this. He had a job to go to. It was just part-time work at a convenience store, but it was all he had. He frowned and tried to recall his current work schedule. He figured he could make enough time for a few more appointments. 

When Hikaru returned home that night, he felt unsettled. His apartment felt too big and too empty. It almost seemed like the walk from his front door where he hastily kicked off his shoes to the living room stretched on for miles. He was like a weary traveler as he sank into the couch cushions. Maybe if he lay there long enough, they would just swallow him up and he wouldn’t have to worry anymore. He continued to lie there, thinking that there should have been someone there to tell him to stop moping and get off his lazy butt. But the apartment was silent. 

He stayed on the couch, only dozing off briefly, until it was morning and he had to get up to head in for his shift at the convenience store.

\---

Dr. Yabu greeted him with a friendly smile as he stepped into the office for his next appointment. The doctor had one of the waiting room couch cushions in his hand, but he easily slipped it back into place once Hikaru closed the front door. Hideous flower patterns would not have been Hikaru’s first choice for a couch, but nobody ever said doctor office waiting rooms had to be fashionable. 

“What are you doing?” 

Yabu nudged the cushion with his knee to make sure it was back in place before answering. “One of my patients earlier misplaced her glasses. I told her I’d look for them but no luck so far.”   
“You have other patients?” Hikaru scoffed. 

“Still grumpy from the sleep deprivation I see,” Yabu said, cheerful as ever. He opened the door to the hallway. “You can head on back and settle in. I’ll be there in a minute.” 

Instead of sitting in the chair right away, Hikaru walked over and examined the machine Dr. Yabu had used last time. There wasn’t anything special about it. _Dalí, Inc_ was the brand name emblazoned on the top right corner. It had buttons and knobs and that was about it. Hikaru wondered how it worked, but Yabu walked in before he could look closer.

“If you want to know how it works, I can let you borrow the user manual,” Yabu said. “It comes with some weirdly surreal illustrated pictures.”

“No thanks.” Hikaru quickly settled into the seat while Yabu rolled up to the machine in his rolling chair. 

“So anything new yet?” he asked, pressing buttons to adjust the settings.

“Nope.”

Dr. Yabu gave him a half smile. “Try staying longer this time. It’ll help. I promise.” 

Hikaru made a skeptical face but didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter anyway because Yabu had already put his ear plugs in. He pressed the button and the machine started humming. Yabu then flashed a cheesy thumbs up his way, which he guessed was meant to be reassuring, but really wasn’t. 

Hikaru closed his eyes and drifted until he found the door again. 

Everything looked basically the same as last time and he was right back where he began: with Takaki and the clocks. 

“Welcome back,” Takaki said. He was halfway through folding a clock in the shape of an origami crane. He slowly and carefully ran his fingers across the folds to smooth them down. “It’s best if you didn’t waste time. Better start moving.” 

Hikaru was taken aback by the clock-keeper’s brusque manner. 

“You can slow down time but you can’t stop it,” Takaki said, repeating what he said last time Hikaru was here. “So get moving.” 

“Okay, okay,” Hikaru said, putting his hands up in defeat. “I’m going.” 

He quickly left the floating clocks behind and walked back to the lake and the cliff. He knew he’d already looked there, but he was drawn in that direction anyway. Soon, he spotted Yuto the boat-builder by the shore, still working on constructing his boat. He was hammering some nails at the moment.

“Oh hey,” Yuto popped his head up as soon as he noticed Hikaru approach, “the Searcher has returned.” 

“Searcher?”

“Still searching for what you forgot, right?” Yuto explained. “Can you hand me that box of nails over there?” 

Hikaru handed it over and then took another look at the boat. Last time he was here, the boat looked about half-finished. But now it was different. The wooden planks covered one whole side of the boat before, but now they only covered about a quarter of the wooden rib frame. It looked like he’d progressed backwards on the boat. 

“Did you make a mistake and have to take some pieces off?” he asked. 

Pausing with his hammer halfway to the nail, Yuto blinked in confusion before he realized what Hikaru was asking. “Oh! No, I finished that boat. This is a new one.” 

“You’re building _another_ boat? Why?” 

“Why not?” Yuto shrugged. “It’s what I do.” 

“But what happened to the other one?” Hikaru looked around but saw no other completed boat anywhere. Just materials and tools for building the current one along with the lake glittering in the background. 

Yuto pointed to the calm waters. “I punch a hole in all of them and then watch them sink in the lake.” He mimed the action with his hammer. 

“ _What?_ All of them? How many boats do you _make?_ ” Hikaru was baffled by the whole idea. Yuto built multiple boats and then sank them all? What was even the purpose of that? It seemed like such a waste of time and energy.

“It’s what I do,” Yuto repeated, looking confused as to why Hikaru was confused. “And I don’t know how many it’s been. Definitely a lot though.” 

“Do you at least sail the boats a little before you get rid of them?” Hikaru picked up a piece of wood and examined it, wondered if Yuto sealed the boat for leaks before he sent it to its watery grave.

Yuto shook his head in response to the question. He picked up another nail and began to hammer it down in place. He frowned when he hit it at the wrong angle and it bent. He yanked it out quickly to replace it with a better one. 

Hikaru didn’t understand but he wasn’t going to argue because he needed to keep moving. “I think I’m going to see Keito.” 

“Tell him I said hi,” Yuto said with a smile and went back to hammering his boat without a care in the world. “Good luck, Searcher!”

Keito was, of course, in the same place he was last time: halfway up the cliff. Hikaru called up to him and he looked down and waved, looking unconcerned about dangling off the side of a cliff. He quickly climbed back down and shyly said hello when he jumped the last little distance to the ground. 

“Haven’t found your person yet?” he asked. 

“No,” Hikaru answered,” and I really don’t know what to do.” 

Keito scratched his chin as he thought about suggestions. “Well I haven’t seen anything but maybe you can see something I can’t at the top.” He pointed up to where the cliff met the sky. 

Hikaru looked and almost felt dizzy at the sheer height. He had never been afraid of high places but there was something about the cliff that freaked him out. He couldn’t explain it. “I don’t think I can climb up there.” 

“It’s not actually as difficult as it looks. You just have to go steady. And I can help you?” Keito offered tentatively. He patted the rock face like an old friend and waited for Hikaru’s answer. 

Was it worth it? Hikaru had no idea if what he was looking for would be at the top or not. But maybe he should try. Maybe it was his best shot. “Can we climb real slow?” 

“Sure. All we’ve got to do is keep the tempo steady.” 

Hikaru paused. “Why do you keep saying that?”

Keito gave him an apologetic look as if he didn’t know himself before showing him where to place his hands on the rock and explain how to pull himself up and find handholds. Hikaru listened and followed the instructions and soon he was clinging to the rock just a bit above ground. It wasn’t high up at all but his heart was pounding already. He watched Keito calmly lift himself up just a bit higher. 

“Use that spot right there,” Keito said and indicated an impression in the rock big enough for Hikaru’s fingers.

Slowly, Hikaru reached upwards to grasp the rock face. His fingers curled into the hole and he gripped it tight as he could, wishing that he had long fingernails that could dig into the rock and make him feel more secure. But as soon as he thought he had the right grip, his fingers slipped a little and he leaned back in a sudden panic. He felt Keito’s hand on his back, reassuring him that he wasn’t going to fall. But Hikaru’s sense of resolve had been shaken and he pressed himself as close to the cliff as he possibly could. The rock felt like a comforting embrace against the skin of his face.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“Steady,” Keito reminded him. “You’re okay.”

“No,” Hikaru answered, feeling too scared to even shake his head. He just didn’t feel like he was capable of climbing to the top of the cliff. His heart was pounding so loudly he thought it might explode. “I’m going down,” he announced and then slowly lowered himself back to solid ground. It wasn’t too far away yet. 

Keito looked disappointed before he began continuing his own ascent to the top. “Maybe next time.” 

Hikaru turned his back on the cliff to forget about it. Perhaps this was the wrong place to search anyway. This… world… whatever it was, looked like it stretched on forever, just a vast barren plain. But there had to be something else here… right? He started walking, listening to the quiet crunch of sand under his shoes. He picked a direction he hadn’t travelled in before, and after what seemed like forever, he spotted something up ahead. 

A house maybe? It was some sort of small building, anyhow. As he approached it, the structure looked more like a shop or a general store maybe. He didn’t know much about architecture but it was a simple design, a little rundown-looking with a porch on the front. Two empty rocking chairs creaked slowly in the breeze. 

He opened the door and stepped inside, cautiously calling out hello to anyone there.

“We’re in here,” a voice called out in response from a nearby room. He followed it and found two guys in a workshop room surrounded by pocket watches, although these watches were normal and not stretchy or floating like Takaki’s clocks had been. The room looked cluttered with all the gears and springs and other watch parts lying around. There were even pieces attached to the walls and hanging from the ceiling. If he hadn’t been paying attention, he might have missed the two people working at the table in the middle. They were both wearing old-fashioned safety goggles and dark-colored jumpsuits with even more gears spilling out of their pockets as they huddled together over the piece they were working on. Hikaru thought they were dressed sort of like some half-attempted steampunk cosplay he could have imagined seeing on TV.

“Welcome,” said the one sitting on the left. The nametag on his jumpsuit read _Yamada Ryosuke_ in plain stitching. “If there’s something you need, we probably want it, and if there’s something you want, we probably need it. But if you have a watch, we’ll look at it during business hours.” 

Hikaru took a moment to try and process the greeting but eventually just gave up. “…is it business hours right now?” Hikaru asked. This place was certainly strange. 

“…is it business hours right now?” Yamada asked his companion. 

The other guy, _Arioka Daiki_ as was written on his uniform, pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and read out loud. “Business hours: Monday through Friday 6:42am to 8:13pm. Closed for lunch every day from 11:20am to 11:22am except for Thursdays when lunch is from 6:42am to 8:13pm.” He put the paper back in his pocket and turned to Yamada. “It’s not Thursday is it?” 

“Is Thursday the one that comes after Wednesday?” 

“Yes.”

“Then it’s not Thursday.” 

Hikaru watched the exchange and wondered how often these guys got the chance to get out of the shop. 

“Anyway,” Yamada said, bringing his focus back to Hikaru. “Welcome! It is currently business hours. Should we help you?” 

“Can,” Daiki corrected.

“ _Can_ we help you?” 

“Uh…” Hikaru felt a bit overwhelmed by these two and their strangeness. “Well I’m trying to find something I forgot. A person.” 

“Oh,” Daiki nodded. “People. Very complicated on the inside. Lots of little gears and such.” He wiggled his fingers like he was demonstrating how gears turned.

Hikaru didn’t know whether he was being metaphorical or not. So far, Yamada and Daiki seemed to be as unhelpful as the rest. 

Yamada stretched his hand out towards Hikaru. “We’re not good with people. Just watches. Do you have one?” He waited to see if Hikaru would give him a watch. 

Hikaru was about to say no but then he remembered that Takaki had given him a small pocket watch the first time he had come to this world. Hikaru had forgotten about it and wondered whether it was still in his pocket. He dug his hand into the back pocket of his jeans and there it was, surprisingly. Still neatly folded up and everything. He placed it in Yamada’s hand. 

Yamada smiled as he looked it over and Daiki leaned in to get a better look too. “Ah, one of Takaki’s,” Yamada said as he carefully unfolded the watch so that it looked like any other normal watch again. Simultaneously, he and Daiki put magnifying glasses over their goggles as they examined it more closely. Hikaru awkwardly shifted his weight from foot to foot as he waited. Was he wasting time again? 

“Looks like it’s working just fine,” Yamada finally declared and passed it on to his partner. Daiki nodded in agreement and set the watch gently on the table. He adjusted it neatly so that the watch face was perfectly aligned in front of him. And then he pulled out a hammer and raised it up above the pocket watch.

“Woah, wait!” Hikaru exclaimed as he realized what Daiki was about to do. He threw his hands out in a panic to shield the watch from destruction. “What are you doing?” 

“What am I doing?” Daiki asked Yamada, the hammer paused mid-swing. 

“Our job.” 

“Right,” Daiki nodded. “Our job. We fix watches and break watches. This one is okay so it needs to be broken.” 

“But it’s not even mine,” Hikaru continued. He reached for the pocket watch but Yamada snatched it up quicker. 

“Takaki doesn’t mind. He sends up stuff to fix and break all the time,” he explained as he preciously cradled the watch against his chest, like he was protecting it from _Hikaru_ instead of Daiki. 

“Are you sure—”

But before Hikaru could protest further, Yamada had placed the watch back in front of Daiki who gleefully dropped the hammer on it. The glass face cracked and then shattered. Another few swings and the metal casing was all bent out of shape and exposing the gears underneath. Feeling satisfied with his work, Daiki collected all the pieces together before dumping them into a small empty box. 

“We’ll have this fixed before the first time you come in here,” Yamada said. 

“The next time,” Daiki corrected. 

“The _next_ time you come in here.” 

Hikaru frowned as he looked at the two mechanics. They both smiled at him, oblivious to his annoyed confusion. He reached out and flicked one of the nearby gears with his finger and then watched them turn, each piece interlocking perfectly with another. It didn’t make him feel better.

“You wouldn’t have to fix it at all if you hadn’t broken it in the first place,” he said. 

“But that’s our job,” Daiki explained in the same confused way Yuto had done when Hikaru had questioned him about the boats. “Yamada fixes and I break.” 

“Sometimes we switch roles just for fun,” Yamada added.

“It’s like…” Daiki couldn’t find the word he was looking for, and he drew a circle in the air with his finger as he tried to remember it. “It’s like a… a cycle!” he suddenly said. “Like the hands of the clock keep rotating.” 

Like everything else in this strange world, Hikaru didn’t understand. But he didn’t want to get into a pointless argument about it. None of it would help him find his missing memories. So instead, he just told them he’d pick up his pocket watch later and asked if there was anything else nearby to check out. 

“Follow the hallway.” Daiki pointed out the door, and Yamada nodded in agreement which made his goggles slip down on his forehead. 

“Thanks,” Hikaru turned to leave but could hear their voices still.

“Watch you later,” Yamada called out cheerfully.

“See,” Daiki corrected.

“ _See_ you later!” 

The hallway was one of those weird impossibilities of this strange world, just like Takaki’s floating clocks were. At first it had looked normal. The hardwood floor and rustic wood-paneled walls matched the room he was just in. But something was weird. From the outside, the building had looked small. The hallway shouldn’t have stretched out this far, but he’d already been walking for what felt like twenty minutes or longer. And the longer he walked, the more strange and twisted the hallway became. The walls began to look warped, bowed out, and pushed in. It was like an image in a funhouse mirror, only there were no mirrors. And even as he continued walking, he felt like his body was leaning to the side and he was stumbling over his feet. But finally, the walls and floor transitioned from wood to white tile and everything straightened back up again.

The room he finally reached was sterile-looking and white-tiled liked the end of the hallway. There was hardly anything inside except for an old-timey glass phone booth, a counter, and a white door. Hikaru reached for the handle but the door was locked. This was a dead end. With a sigh, he pictured his own door and waited for it to appear. The brown oak door added some color to the room but Hikaru wasn’t going to stick around to appreciate it.

As he stepped through the doorway, he thought he caught the faintest sound of music coming from the room, but it was too late to go back and check. He woke up a second later back in the office. Dr. Yabu was spinning in circles while sitting in his rolling chair. Once he realized Hikaru was awake, he stopped mid-rotation. The abrupt end to momentum sent Yabu leaning too far to the side and almost falling off the chair. 

“You stayed longer this time. Good job!” Dr. Yabu looked hopeful. 

Hikaru just stared up at the light—a clinical white light—on the ceiling. “This isn’t working.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Yabu asked as his cheerfulness suddenly drained away, leaving behind just the serious tone of a professional.

“What is there to say?” Hikaru scoffed. “Nothing in there makes sense and none of it is what I’m missing.” 

Dr. Yabu placed his clipboard to the side and leaned forward to rest his hand on the armrest of Hikaru’s chair. “I know it’s confusing at first,” he said in a gentle voice, “but the memories really are there. Something happened and you reacted by burying them deep inside. It could have been caused by a strong emotion: anger, sorrow, love. I don’t know.” 

“And I can’t remember.” 

“But,” Yabu continued, “the funny thing about memories is that the important ones are persistent. They circle back around and pop up even if you want to forget. You just need to give it time.”

“You can slow down time but you can’t stop it,” Hikaru repeated Takaki’s words automatically. He didn’t take his eyes off the light above.

“I suppose that’s true.” 

But Hikaru also remembered Takaki’s warning about wasting time. “I think I’m running out of it.”

\---

At home that night, Hikaru picked up his bass guitar from where it had been lying untouched in the corner of his living room. He hadn’t messed with it since the memories disappeared—too worried about other things to play music—and the layer of dust coating the surface suggested he hadn’t picked it up a while before the memory loss either. He let the instrument rest in his lap for a few minutes as he cleaned it off, feeling the smooth surface under his fingertips. The familiarity was comforting. He’d started off ten years ago with an electric guitar but quickly transitioned to bass because he liked playing the low rhythms, liked supporting the melody when he played music with someone. 

He hooked the bass up to his amp, but turned the volume down low. His fingers plucked at the strings as he eased back into his routine. He tapped his foot to keep the beat once he began playing a simple tune which slowly grew more complex as he continued.

For a while he got swept up in the music, closing his eyes as he let the music overtake him. But the peacefulness was shattered in a flash when Hikaru felt something wet on his hand. He opened his eyes and looked down to see a tear drop resting on his thumb. He hadn’t even realized he had been crying. He took a moment to wipe the wet tear tracks off of his cheeks before setting the bass down against the amp.

There was an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and sadness pouring over him like a flood. Hikaru was sure that he used to play music with the missing person. He couldn’t remember what it sounded like, but he was sure it had been beautiful.

He drifted off into a restless sleep that night, listening to the faint sound of a ticking clock keeping pace like an eternal metronome.

\---

When Hikaru returned the next day to Dr. Yabu’s office, he didn’t waste any time on pleasantries. The office was empty so the young doctor had his feet propped up behind the counter as he read a magazine. Without waiting to be called back, Hikaru burst through the doorway and went straight to the usual room. Yabu popped in just a moment later, obviously pleased at Hikaru’s hasty attitude and sudden determination. 

“Good luck in there,” was all he said as he started up the machine. And soon after that, everything faded away like usual until the wasteland-like scenery reappeared on the other side of the imaginary door.

Hikaru was where he usually began: with the The Keeper of the Clocks. Instead of his usual activities, however, Takaki was focused on trying to throw his clocks up in the air and catch them as they fell back down. 

“Are you trying to juggle?” 

“Can you teach me?” Takaki asked in response. He grabbed a few floating clocks out of the air and handed them to Hikaru. 

Hikaru stared at the clocks in his hands and then at Takaki. He wondered if the Clock Keeper perhaps needed some new hobbies. “Uh, well. Okay.” He gripped the clocks harder to get a better sense of the objects. These ones weren’t squishy or stretchable like the others. Just ordinary pocket watches in his ordinary hands. The perfect size and shape to juggle.

He began a bit hesitantly as he explained the basics. Juggling was not that hard if you could visualize what you were supposed to do. But of course, having good hand-eye coordination was a plus. Hikaru effortlessly tossed the clocks in the air, watching them as they circled around and around from hand to hand. He looked over at Takaki who seemed to be having some difficulty. His motions weren’t smooth—lots of starts and stops instead of flowing steadily—and the clocks didn’t cycle through the loop correctly. He kept dropping them. 

“You should start slower and build up your technique,” Hikaru said. 

“Isn’t it more exciting this way?” Takaki asked. He fumbled fast to catch one he’d almost dropped. “You know, like it’s unpredictable where the clocks will go?”

“No, it just looks like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Takaki frowned at the blunt tone and immediately crossed his arms. His clocks stopped mid-air and hung suspended like they were caught in an invisible web, making the whole scene look more ridiculous than it already was.

“That sounded harsher than I meant,” Hikaru apologized. 

“It’s okay. You don’t have time to teach me anyway.” He plucked one of the clocks out of the air and lobbed it over Hikaru’s shoulder like a softball. Hikaru turned to watch it fly through the air, but was startled to see an encroaching mass of darkness behind him. The clock reached the edge and stretched out like a taut rubber band before it started to dissolve into the nothingness. 

“You can slow down time but you can’t stop it,” Takaki said as usual.

“You distracted me!”

“You distracted yourself,” Takaki shrugged.

“I’ve got to go,” Hikaru said and headed off in the usual direction. The darkness was scary. Did it mean that his window of opportunity to find the memories was closing?

Predictably, Yuto was by the shore of the lake, building another boat as Hikaru paused to catch his breath by running there. His boat this time was only half a frame, something he’d only just started on. He said a friendly hello to Hikaru like nothing was wrong. 

“Are you still doing this?” Hikaru asked between breaths. 

“What else am I going to do?” Yuto gathered up some planks of wood and set them in easy reach as he got to work on the rest of the frame. He stuck a nail he was about to use between his teeth so his hands were free to work more efficiently.

“You could do literally _anything_ else,” Hikaru said. There was a weird sort of anger building up in him as he watched Yuto waste his time. Yuto just did the same thing over and over again with no deviation. Build the boat, sink the boat, start over again. It was frustrating. He should at least enjoy the boat before he got rid of it. 

“How about this?” Hikaru began, coming up with an idea. “You finish this boat and keep it, okay? And when I come back next time,” ( _if I come back,_ he added to himself) “we’ll sail it together on the lake.” 

Yuto tilted his head as he considered the offer, and then he grinned as he came to a decision. “You should help me put this one together then. It’ll be like our own special project. Just a few boards are good enough. I know you’re busy.”

Hikaru knew he was running out of time but he thought maybe a few planks wouldn’t hurt. If it would get Yuto out of this routine, it would be worth it. Yuto wasn’t his problem, but he felt like this would be good for both of them somehow. Yuto handed him a piece of wood and he listened carefully to his instructions. The materials were rough right now so he moved cautiously to not get any splinters.

Hikaru discovered that if he remained focused, the task wasn’t too difficult. Just line up the boards and then nail them in. The hardest part was just making sure they would fit. He shuffled through Yuto’s pile of wood, selecting each piece carefully. Sometimes, he made a few mistakes, but Yuto was patient as he showed him the proper way to remove the nails and fix the problems. 

Taking a step back to observe their work so far, Hikaru wiped away a few beads of sweat from his forehead. They had made good progress on the boat, already completing the frame and half of the planks on one side. But as he refocused, he noticed the darkness in the distance out of the corner of his eye. 

“I can take it from here,” Yuto said with a friendly laugh as the gently took the hammer back from Hikaru. “Thanks for the help, but you probably need to keep looking, right?” 

“Yeah.” He nodded. Strangely enough, he felt less tense than before. The boat-building activity had been a nice change of pace. 

“Don’t forget our promise,” Hikaru said before he headed towards Keito’s cliff. “We’ll sail that one next time.” 

“Good luck Searcher!” Yuto waved enthusiastically. The hammer slipped out of his hand and he jumped to the side to save his toes from sudden pain. Hikaru laughed a bit and shook his head. 

The familiar cliff loomed in his sight, and not surprisingly, Keito was somewhere in the middle, making his way back to the bottom. 

“Ready for another try?” Keito asked when he spotted Hikaru waiting for him. His face shone with a glowing sort of happiness. Rock climbing was something Keito had an intense passion for. 

Before this, Hikaru probably would have said no to the offer, but he was still feeling accomplished from the boat building. Maybe he could finally conquer the cliff. If he just took his time and focused, maybe it would work. 

“Let’s do it,” he nodded. 

Keito guided his hands to the nearest handholds. Hikaru swallowed down his anxiety and then hoisted himself up. Again, he moved slowly, cautiously, always checking out the situation. Keito cheered him on with every upward movement. Hikaru’s heart was pounding, but Keito stayed close for reassurance. He didn’t dare look down. 

Instead he paused for a moment and looked up at the clear sky above him. The blue mixed together and faded to a light shade of orange. The time here always seemed to be dialed to sunset permanently. But that’s what made the place both beautiful and weird. He suddenly realized that he had climbed further up than he ever had before. He was closer to the sky. Everything ahead of him now was unfamiliar territory. 

“You okay?” Keito asked.

Hikaru slowly shifted so that his face pressed up against the solid rock. He didn’t know what lay above him. He was only relying on Keito as his guide. It was a scary feeling. Hikaru supposed he was like Yuto in the regard that he liked routine; he sought comfort from it. It was just so much easier to stick to the same old thing than to climb out of his comfort zone. 

With a start, he realized that his fingers were slipping. He panicked and tried to readjust his grip. A startled shout escaped from his lips unintentionally. One of Keito’s hands gripped his arm as he steadied himself. 

“Maybe this is enough for today,” Hikaru said, not surprised at how shaky his voice sounded. 

Keito smiled. “You’ve been very steady so far.” 

“Like a steady tempo, right?” Hikaru joked in an attempted to calm his nerves. 

“Exactly.” 

“Maybe next time I’ll get to see what’s at the top of the cliff,” Hikaru said. He eased his way back down, moving to the rhythm of his frantically beating heart. 

“It’s a really nice view.”

Once he said goodbye to Keito, Hikaru walked towards the building with the strange watch mechanics. He didn’t know if that place would be any help but he couldn’t waste any more time aimlessly wandering around this world. From the corner of his eye, he could see the still encroaching darkness. Just looking at it sent chills down his spine. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to create a door to escape if he got caught up in that dark mass. He wondered what would happen to his body if his mind never returned. 

His footsteps echoed across the wooden porch as he rapidly walked towards the door. But his eyes swept over to the two rocking chairs and he paused before he walked inside, his hand hovering just above the door handle. A weird feeling washed over him, like an insistent tugging on his soul—a _longing_ —and suddenly he wanted to sit in one. It was silly, Hikaru thought. His apartment in Tokyo didn’t have a porch or rocking chairs, so he didn’t understand this sudden desire to just _sit._

He mustered up all his willpower to look away and then he wrenched open the front door. The feeling was gone once he stepped inside and he sighed in relief, but there was a tiny twinge of regret around the edges of his mind now too. 

“Welcome front!” a voice called out to greet him as he stepped into the watch-covered room.

“Back,” Daiki corrected.

“Welcome _back!_ ” Yamada greeted. He then frowned and leaned forward to whisper to Daiki. “That doesn’t make any sense. I can’t _see_ his back. He’s in _front_ of me.” 

“…hi?” Hikaru interrupted. He didn’t think he was going to get used to these weird mechanics anytime soon. They both peered at him through the goggles, magnifying their eyes to resemble insect ones. 

Daiki brushed away some spare gears and uncovered a box resting on the table. He pulled out a shiny pocket watch and held it out for him. “We fixed the watch for you, just like we promised.” He turned to Yamada. “We _did_ promise that, right?” 

“I believe so,” Yamada answered. “It _does_ work again, right?” 

“I believe so,” Daiki repeated back. 

“Thank… you…?” Hikaru grabbed the pocket watch and examined it closer. The glass covering over the face had been replaced and the dented metal parts had been straightened back out. The tiny hands of the clock ticked forward one second at a time like it should, so Hikaru assumed that the inside was as good as new too. 

“You see,” Daiki said as he leaned forward to gather up some parts for another project. “Everything is breakable and everything is fixable.” 

“Is there something you need to repair?” Yamada asked him while he passed a miniscule screwdriver to Daiki. 

Hikaru didn’t know how to answer the question. There wasn’t anything physically broken, but it was becoming more clear to Hikaru that his relationship with the missing person had been what was wrecked. Perhaps he had been the problem. Perhaps _he_ was the thing that needed fixing. But how was he supposed to do that? 

“I have to continue my search,” Hikaru finally said, avoiding the question. “I’m sorry.” 

“No need to apologize,” Yamada said. “We understand. We’ll always be right there if you need us.” 

“ _Here_ ,” Daiki corrected with a sigh.

“…right _here_ if you need us,” Yamada nodded.

Hikaru exited the watch repair room with a lot on his mind. The mechanics were very strange people but they had fixed the pocket watch perfectly. He remembered what it looked like when Daiki had smashed it to pieces earlier. He didn’t think they’d be able to make it whole again, but they had. It had probably been very difficult. He imagined them sorting through their vast collection of parts, looking for replacements, for spares, as they put everything back in its proper place. 

It almost gave Hikaru a tiny bit of hope. If he _had_ been the one to ruin his relationship with his missing person, maybe there was a chance he could put it back together again. Maybe he could smash the parts of himself that were broken and replace them with better parts. Maybe he could function again and they could be happy together. 

That is, if he could ever find the missing memories at all. 

With that thought, Hikaru looked up and realized he was in that white-tiled room from his last visit. Without even thinking, he’d followed the hallway all the way down here again, like he was inexplicable drawn to it. 

But this time, the room wasn’t empty. There was a person sitting behind the counter wearing large bulky headphones while he messed with an array of cables on the wall that Hikaru hadn’t noticed the first time. The black-haired guy looked like he was intensely focused on his task, but Hikaru still tentatively stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat. The name plate on the counter read _Chinen Yuri, Operator._

“Excuse me?” Hikaru said and waited. 

Chinen glanced at him with a skeptical look. He covered a microphone coming out of the wall with his hand before he whispered his response. “Sorry, I’m working right now. Use the phone.” He pointed to the phone booth on the other side of his wall of cables. 

Hikaru frowned but stepped into the phone booth anyway. The phone was old-fashioned and looked like something that would have been used in the 1940’s or 50’s maybe. He picked up the receiver and put his finger up to the rotary dial, but then he realized he didn’t know who to actually call. He noticed a crumpled piece of paper taped beside it that said _dial 0 for the operator._ Without any other idea of what to do, he turned the dial to zero. 

It rang one time before Chinen answered. Hikaru could hear his voice both through the receiver and also coming from the other side of the wall. “Hello?” 

“May I speak to the operator?” Hikaru said, deciding to be formal about this because old-fashioned things always made him feel like he should. 

“Sorry, the operator is busy. Try again later.” Then the line went dead. 

Hikaru blinked and then leaned out of the booth to look at Chinen. The other guy gave him an innocent smile and went back to messing with the phone cables. So Hikaru tried again. 

He didn’t even give Chinen a chance to speak before he rushed his own words out. “Can I speak to the operator?” 

“Sorry, that line is busy.” 

Hikaru stuck his head out of the booth again to directly face the operator. “You’re right here talking to me. How can the line be busy?” 

Chinen covered the microphone again. “Shh, I’m on the phone.” 

“You’re on the phone with me!” Hikaru exclaimed. He was pretty sure the operator was trolling him on purpose and enjoying it. 

Hikaru returned to the phone with an exasperated sigh and tried a different tactic. “Can I talk to _anyone_ else?” 

“All lines are busy. Try again later.” He said this last bit with a cutesy sing-song voice, and Hikaru felt the urge to bash his head against the wall. 

But Chinen hadn’t disconnected the line yet, so Hikaru just continued talking in the hopes that something would help. “I just want to find my missing memories and fix what I broke. Can you help me? Can anyone help me?” 

“I don’t know anything about that. I’m just the operator.” It sounded like Chinen was smirking. Hikaru looked around to check and yeah, Chinen was smirking. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked that guy. He didn’t listen very well.

“Can I speak to someone who can help me?” 

“Sorry, all lines are busy. Try again later.” 

Hikaru slammed the received down and ended the call himself. He ran his hands over his face and stepped out of the phone booth. He glared at Chinen as he tried to figure out what to do next. While he was standing there, the Keeper of the Clocks himself walked in from the hallway. Takaki said hello to Hikaru and Chinen before stepping into the phone booth. 

“Hello, Operator? Can you connect me to the usual place?” Takaki said. 

“Here you go!” Chinen said cheerfully and arranged the cables so that Takaki was connected to whoever he wanted to speak to. 

Hikaru crossed his arms and frowned at Chinen. “Really?” 

Chinen pretended to be oblivious as he covered the microphone again. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m working. I can’t talk right now.” 

There was a sudden urge to climb over the counter and yank all the cables out of the connecting ports in the wall, but Hikaru chose to ignore it. He was pretty sure his eye was twitching a little though. A moment later, Takaki finished his conversation, said goodbye to both of them, and left again. 

With a deep breath, Hikaru stepped into the booth to try one more time. He dialed zero and waited. “Hello Operator?” he began, imitating what Takaki had said. “Can you connect me to the usual place?” 

“Sorry, that line is busy.”

“Are you kidding me??” Hikaru leaned his head against the wall and resisted the urge to hang up the phone. Instead he gripped the received just a bit tighter and grit his teeth before he continued. Maybe Chinen would listen to him this time. “Is there any line that isn’t busy?” 

“Nope,” came the cheerful response. 

“Can you check again?” 

Chinen didn’t answer but Hikaru could hear the quiet clicks of the operator shifting cables around again. But along with that sound, he also began to hear the faint sound of piano music. That was a bit unexpected. He leaned out of the booth again. 

“Did you put me on hold?” 

Chinen shook his head and then returned to his work again. Hikaru decided to give up on the useless phone call and investigate the music instead. It sounded sort of familiar but he wasn’t sure where he’d heard it before. The melody was simple but flowed smoothly from one note to the next, but as the song continued it became more complicated and more beautiful. 

Hikaru walked around the room and finally determined that the music was coming from behind the white door near the phone booth. He tried to open it but the door was locked. He pressed his ear against the door, somehow wanting to be as close to the music as possible. He closed his eyes and let the music wash over him as he tried to memorize each note. A nostalgic ache began to form in his chest and he really wished he could open the door and see who was playing the piano on the other side. 

But the door didn’t budge. Perhaps he wasn’t ready yet to remember everything. He took a step away. He couldn’t bear to hear the music anymore. It was time to leave this world again.

When he woke up, he was not surprised to see Dr. Yabu with his nose buried in a magazine instead of taking any notes or monitoring him at all. Hikaru sat up and rubbed his temples. 

“How did it go?” Yabu asked, putting the magazine away. He reached out and helped Hikaru up from the chair even though he didn’t need any assistance. 

But Hikaru didn’t know how to put the experience into words for the doctor. He felt like he was running out of time, like he was broken, like he was so close to figuring it all out yet so far away at the same time. Dr. Yabu didn’t push the question, but followed Hikaru out to the waiting room. They made an appointment for another day, and then Hikaru left the office feeling weirdly incomplete. 

\---

Hikaru felt like he was on autopilot as he climbed onto the train as he headed home. His mind was too distracted from sorting through his turbulent emotions from the most recent appointment. The train wasn’t too crowded in the early afternoon, so he easily found a seat where he wasn’t rubbing elbows with everyone. It wasn’t long before he realized his mind was running in circles trying to interpret things and he needed to think about something else for a bit. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the different apps to focus on something else. He looked through his photos but there were none of the mystery person. Just some nature shots and an accidental photo of his foot. 

Absentmindedly, he found his way to the part of his phone that stored audio clips and was surprised to find that it wasn’t empty. There was one file and the time stamp was from more than three months ago. Hikaru was curious about this mysterious recording so he turned the volume down and pressed play as he cradled the phone close to his ear.

“Hey Hikaru, it’s me!” the voice began in a cheerful tone. “I stole your phone to leave you a present!” it continued with a teasing lilt. Hikaru’s eyes widened as he realized this had to be the voice of the missing person himself. He focused on the details of the sound; it wasn’t very deep and had a slightly scratchy tone to it. He listened closely as the voice continued, hoping for more clues. 

“I wrote this for you as a surprise for whenever you notice this recording on your phone.” He laughed and it was a sharp, warm sound. “Hope you like it!” 

Hikaru listened as the sound of rustling paper came through the speaker, followed by a brief silence. And then a few quiet notes began to play on a piano.

Hikaru dropped his phone in shock. It clattered to the floor of the train and a few passengers shot him nasty looks for interrupting their peaceful ride.

It was the same song he’d just heard in that dream-like world, the song coming from behind the locked door. _That_ was why it had seemed so familiar. He picked the phone up and cradled it by his ear again and listened to the soothing melody. He felt like he was so close to remembering, if only he could have gone through that locked door and seen the guy’s face as he played the piano. 

The train pulled into the next stop at the station and Hikaru rushed out the door onto the platform. He had to go back. One more time and he’d figure it all out. The memories were there, on the edge of his mind like a word on the tip of his tongue. 

Not much later, Hikaru barged into Dr. Yabu’s office without knocking. The doctor himself was vacuuming the waiting room and confusion crossed over his face once he saw his patient. “Did you forget something?” 

The sheer stupidity of that question made Hikaru pause and glare at the young doctor. 

“I meant, did you leave something here, like a bag or…?” Dr. Yabu clarified as he rolled up the cord of the vacuum cleaner now that he was done. 

“No, I need you to turn that machine on again for me. I’ve almost remembered what I’m missing.” 

Yabu frowned. “You’re supposed to wait at least twenty-four hours between sessions. Otherwise, you run the risk of causing damage to yourself.” 

“I’ll take that risk,” Hikaru declared and marched confidently down the hallway. “I’ve already wasted too much time.” His hands fluttered in the air as he tried to find the words to explain the urgency welling up in him. “It’s like I’m a clock that is broken. The hands don’t move anymore, but time didn’t stop when I did. So the longer things are broken, the more time I lose and the more time I need to catch up when it’s finally fixed.” 

Yabu continued to frown but he seemed to understand. “Let the record show that I advised against this in my professional medical opinion,” he said as he put his earplugs in and pressed the button on the Dalí device.

Hikaru closed his eyes as the humming began. He already felt like he was drifting away as he crossed into the other world again. Nothing looked different except that the darkness had moved closer than ever before. He turned to look for Takaki and was surprised to see him curled up for a nap under the leafless tree with a large clock stretched out over him as a makeshift blanket. 

“Back already?” Takaki blinked up at him with groggy eyes. “Usually I have time to sleep first.” 

“I’ve almost figured it out,” Hikaru explained. “I’ve almost got my memories back.” 

“Good. Persistence is good.” Takaki sounded like he was drifting off to sleep. 

“I, uh, wanted to return your watch before I left,” Hikaru held out the small pocket watch Takaki had given him on his first trip to the world. Just by looking at it, he would never know that the mechanics had smashed it to bits and then put it back together. 

Takaki snuggled down further under his clock blanket. “Keep it. It’s a gift.” 

“Thanks.” Hikaru didn’t waste time on any more pleasantries as he took off towards Yuto and the lake. He had a promise to keep. He found the boat-builder sitting on a rock by the shore, looking out over the calm waters. Hikaru felt sort of relieved to see that Yuto had taken a break from his routine. The finished boat waited patiently nearby. 

“Back for another round of searching, huh?” Yuto greeted him with a smile as he noticed Hikaru. 

“Yep.” Hikaru took a closer look at the little rowboat he’d helped Yuto make. It looked sturdy enough for the water. “You ready to sail this thing?” 

Yuto hopped up eagerly and began to drag the boat to the water’s edge. “I’ve been waiting. I’m… sort of excited.” Yuto was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, so Hikaru thought _sort of excited_ might be a bit of an understatement. 

Hikaru laughed. “What have you been doing while waiting?” he asked. 

“Oh, lots of things. I reorganized all my tools, visited Keito, tried fishing—there aren’t any fish in the lake, by the way—and I contemplated the magnificence of life.” Yuto spread his arms out as he listed that last thing, like he was basking in the glory of just existing. “Oh and I made us some oars.” He handed Hikaru a wooden set so they’d be able to navigate in the little boat. 

“Let’s do this,” Hikaru said and motioned for Yuto to climb in. Once the taller guy was settled, Hikaru pushed the boat into the water and hopped in too. The boated rocked sharply for a moment as it tried to stabilize itself from the additional weight. The two of them gripped the edges tightly and Hikaru hoped they wouldn’t capsize. He didn’t know how to swim and he couldn’t tell how deep the water was. But after a few harrowing moments, the boat evened out and it was smooth sailing from there. 

“This is so cool,” Yuto exclaimed as he slowly got the hang of rowing with the oars. “So much different than dry land. We’re floating!” 

“Yeah,” Hikaru agreed. He was more focused on observing the scenery. His perspective was different out on the lake. The dark blue water seemed to stretch on forever as he watched ripples dance away with each stroke of the oar, breaking the glass-like smooth surface. In the distance, Hikaru could see more cliffs and above those, a few misty clouds. 

All of a sudden Hikaru was gripped by a memory. It was a weird sort of hazy feeling since he couldn’t see the memory. He could just hear the voice—the same one from the recording on his phone. But the voice sounded angry in this memory. 

_“Don’t you get tired of doing the same thing every day?”_ he asked harshly. Hikaru remembered that he had turned his back on the speaker to avoid the lecture. But the voice continued anyway. _“It’s all pointless. Are you really going to stay a convenience store clerk for the rest of your life? How are you going to live that way?”_

Hikaru remembered the anger he had felt from hearing these words. Anger because the voice had a point but he’d been too scared to admit it. It was just so much easier to do the same thing every day. Nothing to worry about if nothing ever changed. Hikaru remembered the sound of a slamming door as the person who the frustrated voice belonged to walked away. 

“Hey, are you listening?” Yuto’s voice cut through the memory as it faded away and Hikaru realized he was still sitting in the rowboat in the lake. 

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” 

Yuto pointed to the darkness in the distance. “I just said, we might want to head back to shore now. You’ve still got things to do, don’t you?” He began to row back the way they came. Hikaru agreed and watched as the shore grew closer and closer until they finally bumped up against the sand again. 

“That was fun,” Yuto said as he helped pull the boat the rest of the way out of the water. “I’m keeping this boat and I’m gonna go sailing again soon.” 

“A change in routine is good every now and then,” Hikaru said. And now he realized those were words he needed to tell himself too. He didn’t remember all the details yet. But they were coming back to him slowly in pieces. He needed to keep going to figure it all out. 

“I’m going to go climb a cliff now,” he said with certainty this time. He wasn’t going to give up halfway to the top. 

“Have fun, Searcher!” Yuto waved as always. 

Surprisingly, Keito was already waiting for him at the bottom, casually leaning up against the cliff with an expectant smile.

“How did you know I was coming?” Hikaru asked. 

“I saw you and Yuto in the lake from the top of the cliff. Knew you’d be here soon. You’re a bit predictable, like a steady tempo.” Keito answered in a more comfortable voice than his usual shy one. 

Hikaru mimed the same pose and leaned against the rock wall as well. “Do you keep talking about the tempo because that’s something my missing person used to say?” 

“Seems like it,” Keito shrugged. 

Hikaru closed his eyes and let another memory wash over him. It began with the voice again, but this time he was laughing, just like he had in the phone recording. _“Why don’t we try playing it again? And keep it steady this time! I can’t keep up if you keep racing ahead in the music.”_

This time, Hikaru could actually see some of the memory instead of only hearing it. In the memory, he was sitting in his apartment’s living room, his bass guitar resting across his lap. Music was spread out on the floor in front of him. There was the sound a piano playing but the instrument and musician was just outside of his field of vision. 

_“Maybe you should just play faster,”_ Memory-Hikaru teased. 

_“That’s not how it’s written in the music,”_ the voice answered back. _“I thought you didn’t like improvising.”_

Hikaru was sure the speaker was grinning even if he couldn’t see him. Because Memory-Hikaru was grinning too, obviously enjoying the banter. _“Sometimes it’s okay to improvise, I suppose.”_

_“Like last night?”_ the voice laughed again loudly as he shuffled through his music. 

Memory-Hikaru actually blushed a bit. _“Shut up,”_ he muttered. _“Just play the music. I’ll keep the tempo this time.”_

Hikaru opened his eyes again and the memory faded away. He was again standing by the cliff with Keito who watched him with curious eyes. Hikaru looked ahead and saw the darkness again, that big black spot that made him anxious every time he saw it. His head was beginning to hurt a bit. 

“Did you just remember something?” Keito asked. 

Hikaru nodded.

Keito gestured to the cliff. “Do you want to talk about it on the way up?” 

“Not really sure what there is to say,” Hikaru said as he searched for a handhold just like Keito had taught him before. Keito followed along. “The two of us were playing music. Me, bass guitar. Him, piano. He was sort of making fun of me because we couldn’t quite get our playing to sync up.” 

“The music probably sounded funny,” Keito said. “Do you think you two practiced together often?” 

“Probably.” Hikaru realized they were already halfway up the cliff. The talk had distracted him and that made the climb a little bit easier. He just moved instinctually, finding the right spot to pull himself up. “It was a happier memory than the last one.” 

“That’s good then.” Keito pointed to the next handhold for him. 

Hikaru looked up and could see the top of the cliff closer than ever now. He thought about the memory again. In it, his boyfriend, the piano player, had complained about Hikaru’s overly fast playing. He wondered briefly if that had something to do with whatever bad thing that had happened between them. But the longer he thought about it, the more he began to suspect the problem was quite the opposite. They’d acknowledged in the memory that he didn’t like to improvise. Hikaru liked to stick to the safe route. He liked to keep his feet planted solidly on the ground, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps the missing person, his boyfriend, the piano player didn’t quite… sync up with the way Hikaru lived. 

“The last memory I had…” Hikaru began again between deep breaths as he started getting very tired of the climb. “The last memory was an argument. He was angry at me because… I don’t know, I guess because I don’t have any ambition or something.”

“You’re free-climbing up the side of a cliff,” Keito laughed. “I’d say that’s pretty ambitious.” 

Hikaru adjusted his grip on the sharp rocks and laughed. “I suppose you’re right.” Not that anyone in the real world would ever know about this particular accomplishment.

“We’re almost there,” Keito said, pointing upwards. “Very close.” 

Hikaru paused a moment to take in the experience. He was further than he’d ever been and he was actually going to make it all the way up this time. It was still terrifying. His heart was still pounding loudly in his chest. But he needed to do this. He needed to conquer the unknown. 

Keito pulled himself up over the ledge at the top first, and then he stretched his hand out to Hikaru. With every muscle in his arms straining, Hikaru ignored the helpful hand and pulled himself up without any assistance. He landed with an ungraceful tumble on the flat dusty surface of the top. 

“You made it!” Keito cheered.

“I made it,” Hikaru said, and stood up slowly as all the blood finally began moving normally through his body again. The view from here was absolutely amazing. He could see the land that stretched on seemingly forever. He could see the lake, and Yuto was a tiny dot moving on the shoreline. He could see the mechanic’s building where he would be heading next, just a speck on the landscape. He could even make out the tiny figure of Takaki, still curled up under the tree for a nap surrounded by his melting clocks. 

Of course, from the top he could also see the darkness better. It was still moving towards them, dissolving anything it touched. But before Hikaru could worry about the implications of this, another memory hit him hard. 

Instead of angry, the voice just sounded sadly frustrated. _“Are you really going to live your whole life and not try anything new? Does the unknown scare you that much?”_

Memory-Hikaru was in the kitchen, cooking noodles for the two of them to share. _“What’s wrong with our life now? Why change things when they work?”_ he answered back defensively. He stirred the pot and watched the noodles swirl around. 

_“Because things could be_ better. _If only you would just open yourself up to it.”_ There were footsteps as the voice came closer. And then Memory-Hikaru could see a hand belonging to the speaker, his boyfriend. The skin was pale and his long fingers were perfect for playing the piano. The hand settled softly onto his own hand which was still gripping a spoon and stirring the noodles around. 

_“I got a job offer. Up in Miyagi. It’s a great opportunity for me.”_ He hesitated a moment before continuing. _“For us. Please come with me.”_

The memory dissolved away before Hikaru could hear what the memory version of him answered. But he suspected he already knew. He’d said no. Like the idiot that he was. 

Keito was watching him again with curious eyes but didn’t ask about what happened this time. Hikaru didn’t say anything as he breathed in the clean clear air up on the top of the cliff. The world looked so different from this spot. 

“I’ve got to keep moving,” Hikaru finally said. “My time is running out. How do we climb down from here?” He cautiously looked over the edge at the ground that was so far away.

“Oh, you can just take the elevator.” 

Hikaru blinked and turned to look at Keito, sure that he had misheard. “An elevator?” 

Keito was pointing over his shoulder to an elevator door sitting plainly in the middle of the cliff top. Hikaru was almost positive that it hadn’t been there before, but by this point, he knew he shouldn’t be surprised by anything in this world. 

“If there was an elevator, why spend all the time climbing the cliff?” 

“It only goes one way,” he explained. 

Taking a closer look, Hikaru decided that the elevator was normal enough to ride. “That seems almost like a cheat.” They’d spent all that hard work climbing all the way up here, and now all he had to do was press a button. 

Keito shrugged. “Sometimes life isn’t easy. And then sometimes it is.” 

“Thanks for all your help.” Hikaru stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button. “I promise to keep the tempo steady from now on.” He could see Keito laughing at the promise as the door closed. 

The doors opened and Hikaru discovered that he was near his next destination. He didn’t understand how it worked, but he was glad to be spared the task of walking all the way to the mechanics’ building. As soon as he stepped out, the elevator just disappeared into thin air. Even though he was tired, he walked fast up the few stairs and onto the building’s porch. But instead of walking straight inside, he stopped to sit in a rocking chair. There was still an unexplainable pull drawing him to sit. The chairs were connected to some sort of memory. He was sure about that. 

The wooden chair creaked under his weight, but it was still sturdy enough to support him. He closed his eyes and remembered something else. 

Memory-Hikaru was lying on his side in his bed. He was warm because there was a nice pair of arms wrapped around him. Arms that belonged to the hands he’d seen in the last memory. But this memory happened before that one. He was comfortable in this memory. The two of them weren’t angry at each other. 

_“I think…”_ the voice began, the sound a bit scratchy, a bit groggy. They were probably both about to drift off to sleep. _“I think one day I’ll build a house for us.”_

Memory-Hikaru laughed softly as he threaded his fingers together with his boyfriend’s. _“Going to put that architecture degree to good use?”_

_“Of course I am. I didn’t do all that studying for nothing. It’ll be a nice little house. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a front porch.”_

_“I’ve always wanted a front porch,”_ Memory-Hikaru said. _“With rocking chairs.”_

The voice let out a contented chuckle. _“I can build those too.”_

Memory-Hikaru rolled over to face his boyfriend, but the memory faded away just before the face came into view. Hikaru blinked as he realized he was staring out at the dusty scenery again from the front porch of the watch mechanics’ shop. His fingers gripped the rocking chair tightly. He felt angry and sad that he would never have those rocking chairs and that porch to share with his boyfriend because something had come between them. Hikaru had broken their relationship somehow. 

With a sigh of resignation, Hikaru went inside to see the mechanics. He wanted some advice, no matter how strange it would be coming from the two of them. 

“I need you two to teach me how to fix things,” he announced as soon as he walked into the room, startling both Yamada and Daiki. He didn’t give them a chance to react before he squeezed his way to a seat between them on their workbench. 

“Hi?” Daiki blinked as he leaned in to examine Hikaru like one of their watches. Yamada poked Hikaru’s arm as if to check if he was actually there. Daiki craned his neck around Hikaru so he could see Yamada again. “It’s not lunch time, is it?” 

“Nope,” Yamada shook his head, making his goggles slip down past his eyebrows. 

Daiki faced Hikaru again. “Then we’ll be happy to assist you,” he said while Yamada struggled to get the goggles back into place. 

“I can’t remember what exactly happened yet, but I ruined my relationship with my boyfriend. I want to learn how to fix it.” Hikaru left the _if he’s willing_ thought unsaid because he wasn’t ready to face the possibility that his boyfriend might not want him back. 

“So you want to get back together even though you don’t even remember him?” Daiki asked, looking a bit perplexed. 

Hikaru hadn’t considered that. He looked down at the gears spread out on the table, each one a different size and color. He supposed he could just move on with his life once he remembered everything, but if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t want to. “I just feel drawn to him even if I can’t remember anything,” he admitted. 

“Oh!” Yamada looked like he’d had an epiphany. “Like a ticking sound. An incessant, unending ticking sound from a clock.” 

“Okaaaaaaaaay?” Hikaru didn’t quite follow the metaphor.

“Yes, that makes perfect sense,” Daiki agreed, even though Hikaru thought it really didn’t make any sense at all. But Daiki continued. “People are strange. But we’ll help you anyway.” 

“Time to put on our working goggles,” Yamada declared. Hikaru looked at both of the mechanics as they switched the goggles they were wearing for sets that were identical to the previous ones. 

“Stair one,” Yamada began. 

“Step,” Daiki corrected. 

“ _Step_ one: Identify the bad parts,” Yamada said as he pulled out a box with a pocket watch inside for Hikaru to look at. 

Hikaru examined the watch, all bent up and shattered. He guessed that Daiki had gleefully smashed it up earlier, judging by the proud look on his face. The glass covering the watch face was jagged in places and when Hikaru flipped it over, he saw several dented parts in the metal casing. He could only assume the parts inside were just as damaged. He pointed out each problem he could find, and the mechanics nodded happily. 

“Step two: remove the bad parts,” Daiki continued. The two mechanics spent a few minutes explaining and demonstrating the process. With each piece Hikaru pulled away, he thought about his own broken pieces—his need to cling to routine, his fear of the unknown. Things that had gotten in the way. As he pulled out glass shards and bent gears, he felt like he was pulling out those other things as well. He almost thought he felt a bit lighter, like he’d been clinging to a load of bricks and he’d finally tossed them away. 

“Step three: replace with good parts,” Yamada set a box of shiny spare parts in front of him, so he dug his hands around in there until he found what he needed. He followed the mechanics’ instructions with careful attention to detail just as he had while working with Yuto on his boat. When he was finished, he was amazed by the watch’s transformation. It looked much different now that it had been put back together. The hands ticked forward around the watch face, marking every second that passed. He probably needed to get moving again. 

“So do you think I can fix the relationship?” he asked as he helped them put away the now-unneeded tools. 

“If your gears line up, then they’ll start moving again,” Daiki said, looking sincerely thoughtful around his eyes. 

“Every watch needs proper maintenance, good care, and attention,” Yamada said as he switched back to wearing his other set of goggles. 

Hikaru nodded as he headed towards the door. It was time to continue his journey. 

“Good luck,” Yamada said. “We won’t see you again.” 

“You mean ‘we _will_ see you again,’” Daiki corrected. 

“I meant what I said,” Yamada answered to their surprise. “He doesn’t need us anymore.” And then he smiled, saying goodbye without actually saying anything at all. 

Those words echoed in Hikaru’s head as he walked down the hallway. It was true, he hoped. He didn’t need the strange people of this world to show him the way anymore. He knew what to do. He was only missing a few more pieces of the puzzle. 

And just as he reached the point where the hallway transitioned from wood paneling to tile, he uncovered another puzzle piece in the form of a memory that hit him hard. 

_“I accepted the job offer,”_ the voice said, that familiar sound speaking softly with a mixed tone of hopefulness and sadness along with a hint of determination underneath. _“I hoped that you would move with me.”_

Memory-Hikaru stood in the living room of his apartment with his back turned on the speaker. Instead, his eyes focused on the suitcases resting on the floor, filled to the brim with his boyfriend’s belongings. There were barren spots around the room where his things had already disappeared from alongside Hikaru’s. Even the keyboard that usually sat in the corner was gone, probably already packed away in his boyfriend’s car. 

_“I can’t…”_ Memory-Hikaru answered. He was too afraid to leave this life behind even if it would be incomplete without the other person, the one who had been a fixture in his life for the past two years. _“I can’t just leave. I’d have to find another job, a new place to live…”_

_“But we could do it together,”_ the voice pleaded. 

_“I can’t…”_ Memory-Hikaru repeated. _“Why can’t you just stay?”_

The voice sighed. _“Because I want to try new things, see something different, follow this great work opportunity to do something I love. There are a million reasons.”_

Memory-Hikaru couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the suitcases. He thought about the things inside—his boyfriend’s clothes, his books, his sheet music, and everything else he owned. All crammed together in a tight space, easily portable as he moved far away. _“It’s a mistake…”_ he said quietly. 

_“It’s not!”_ the voice responded in a harsh, angry tone. It clearly said he was done with the argument. A pair of feet invaded Memory-Hikaru’s field of view, and he jerked his head up to see his boyfriend’s back, bent over as he picked up the suitcases. He almost wanted to reach out and touch the messy mop of black hair, to run his fingers through the strands and tangle them up in there. But he had already reached the door and Hikaru couldn’t bring himself to say “stop.” He was too angry. 

_“I’ll give you some time to reconsider and think it over some more. I truly want you to come with me,”_ his boyfriend said, returning to his previous soft tone. He didn’t turn to face Hikaru. _“But I won’t wait forever.”_ And then, he and his belongings disappeared out the door. 

Once the door clicked shut, it took Memory-Hikaru every ounce of control he had not to punch the nearest wall. He was so angry that he hadn’t been able to stop him, hadn’t been able to let go of his fears. He walked into the kitchen, hoping a drink of water would calm him down. But there were photos of him all over the refrigerator. He snatched them all up one by one, ripping away each painful reminder and leaving nothing but blank spaces behind. He stashed the photos away where he’d never think to look for them again before moving on to deleting everything from his phone too. 

_“I want to forget,”_ he said. _“I want to forget.”_

And then the memory faded away. 

Hikaru shook his head to force away the disoriented feeling. Sometime while experiencing the memory, he had sunk to the floor, pressing his back to the wall. He used that to push himself back up, and he wiped away the dampness of unshed tears from the corners of his eyes. He needed to be determined now. He was almost at the end, and he’d changed a bit along the way. All he needed now was the name and the face. Little details were already floating back into his head. 

Hikaru marched off down the while-tiled hallway, listening to the plodding sound of his shoes with every step. Each one echoing steadily like the regular ticking of a clock. 

Chinen the telephone operator sat behind the counter again with his headphones on, connecting and transferring phone calls. Hikaru could hear the piano music coming from behind the door. He wanted to bang on it with frustration when he realized it was still locked. 

“Excuse me,” he said and leaned on the counter to get Chinen’s attention. “Do you have the key?” 

Like last time, Chinen covered the microphone and pointed to the phone booth. “I’m working. Make a phone call.” 

“No,” Hikaru said stubbornly. “Not this time. You’re going to listen to me like I should have listened to my boyfriend.” He reached over the counter and unplugged all the lines. “This is urgent. I need that key.” 

Now that Hikaru finally had his attention, Chinen turned to face him directly. “I don’t have the key for that door.” He pulled out a giant key-ring of about one hundred of them. “I have a lot of keys but not that one. Maybe you have it.” He began plugging all the phone lines back in.

“Of course I don’t have it,” Hikaru said. “How would I have the key?” 

Chinen had an infuriating look of amusement on his face. “Well, have you checked your pockets?”

“Have I checked—?!” Hikaru spluttered at the suggestion. “Of course it’s not in my pocket.” He reached into the pockets of his pants so that he could prove his point, but then his fingers curled around something tiny and metallic. He pulled out a nondescript gold key and stared at it in disbelief. “How…?” 

The operator looked smug. “Don’t ask me. I just work here.” 

Hikaru knew it would be a waste of time to try to figure it out, so he left Chinen to his work while he finally got to open the door. The music hadn’t stopped at all, and it still didn’t stop as he turned the key and slowly pushed the door open. 

The room inside was a stark white like the one he’d just been standing in. It was devoid of anything except for a clock, a piano, and the person playing the instrument. Hikaru recognized the figure from his last memory. His boyfriend was bent over the keyboard as his hands swept across the black and white keys, hitting each note perfectly. Hikaru didn’t speak, too entranced by the music to interrupt. He got lost in the melody until the guy finally hit the last note. 

“That was great,” he said quietly without even thinking. 

“Thank you,” a familiar voice answered. The musician attached to the voice turned around to reveal his face. He broke out into a wide grin as soon as he laid eyes on Hikaru. And once Hikaru saw the happiness on that face, everything came rushing back. 

“Inoo Kei,” he breathed. 

“What took you so long?” Inoo answered back, still smiling. “Took some detours along the way didn’t you?” 

Hikaru was at a loss for words. He was too overwhelmed at the moment from the flood of memories that were falling back into place. Little things like Inoo’s habit of saying random words to make him laugh. Or the time he was obsessed with tomatoes and had one at every meal until it made him sick. Or the intense look of concentration on his face when he worked on getting every detail on his blueprints just right. He remembered it all. There was a pang in his chest as he realized he had let it all walk away. He had stood still while the world kept spinning around him.

“I missed you,” Hikaru said. What else was there to say? 

“I know,” Inoo replied with a ghost of a smirk playing around the corner of his lips. He crossed the room and gave Hikaru a hug. 

“I was an idiot.” 

Now Inoo actually did smirk. “I know that too.” He laughed before getting serious. “Did you think it over? Did you decide what to do?” 

Hikaru paused for half a second before he nodded with determination. He felt more confident now. He’d let go of things holding him back, and now he was ready to go follow the real Inoo. If it wasn’t too late. 

“You know what’s funny?” Inoo said. His voice echoed against the walls in a smooth playful tone. “That clock hasn’t moved a bit while I’ve been in here. But as soon as you stepped into the room, the hands started moving again.” 

“Is that a good thing?” That had to mean something. Everything in this world meant something. 

“I don’t know,” Inoo shrugged with a laugh. “I’m just a memory. Go ask the real Inoo Kei.” 

Hikaru nodded again, not being able to stop grinning himself. He hoped the real person would be as understanding as his memory. The clock was ticking again. It was time to make things right. The door to leave appeared nearby and Hikaru walked right through, letting the strange dream world dissolve away for good. 

He shot straight out of the chair as soon as he woke up, startling Dr. Yabu from the cell phone game he’d been focused on. 

“I remember!” Hikaru said before Yabu could even ask. “Thanks for all your help,” he called out as he dashed out the front door of the doctor’s office. Yabu looked happy and didn’t bother to stop him. Hikaru pulled out his phone. He’d deleted the contact but he knew the number by heart. It rang until finally there was a tentative voice on the other end saying hello. 

“Hello Kei,” Hikaru answered back. 

\---

_Epilogue: Three Months Later_

Hikaru flipped through the pages of his cookbook, trying to find a recipe that involved white rice and tomatoes so he could get rid of the abundance they had stored away in the kitchen. But his phone rang, distracting him from the task. 

“Hello?” Hikaru didn’t recognize the number. 

“ _Hi, this is Dr. Yabu Kota. Just doing a follow up to make sure you’re okay._ ” The doctor’s voice sounded as cheerful as it always was. 

Hikaru pushed the cookbook away and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Do you call all of your patients to check up on them like this?” 

Dr. Yabu laughed. “ _Well no. Actually the real reason I called is because I mailed you a bill but the address was wrong and it got returned._ ” 

Now it was Hikaru’s turn to laugh. “Oh, that’s right! I’ve discovered that changing an address is such a pain. I’ve been missing a lot of mail lately.” He gave the doctor his correct address to write down. 

“ _Oh, you’re in Miyagi prefecture now?_ ” Yabu said. Hikaru could hear the scratching of pen on paper as he jotted down the new address. 

“Yeah,” Hikaru said as he looked around the new kitchen. He was still getting used to the different arrangement of all his cooking supplies, but it had a touch of familiarity to it as well. The refrigerator held a recreation of his photo collage from his old Tokyo apartment. Some of the old photos had been haphazardly taped back together while several new ones had been added to the growing collection. 

“ _So everything worked out?_ ” 

“It did. At least, it has so far.” Hikaru had talked it over with Inoo, had finally opened up about his fears, had finally realized that he was ready to let them go. He had packed up all his things, quit his part-time job, and gone to join his boyfriend. 

At times, the transition had been difficult. A new job hadn’t just fallen out of the sky and getting used to a new place also had its fair share of rough issues. But Inoo had been more understanding than Hikaru felt he deserved. His boyfriend had made the whole ordeal worth it. 

“ _I’m glad you’re doing well_ ,” the doctor answered. “ _If you ever need any more help with memory problems, don’t hesitate to call._ ” 

Hikaru could hear the door open and close, signaling that Inoo was home. “I will,” he answered with a wry smile, thinking about how the young doctor could barely remember where he kept all his paperwork. “Thanks for calling.” Once the call ended, he put his phone away and closed the cookbook. 

“I’m home,” Inoo’s voice called out in a singsong voice as he stepped into the kitchen. Hikaru thought he looked very professional in his dark business suit he was required to wear when he worked in the office at the architecture company. Hikaru much rather preferred the days when Inoo got to work on-site, getting dusty and dirty while helping direct the construction of a building, but the suits weren’t bad either. 

“I brought you something,” Inoo said, as he rummaged through his briefcase. 

“Blueprints?” Hikaru gasped in a mock-hopeful tone just to tease Inoo. 

“Yes,” Inoo laughed. “The blueprints to a beautiful melody.” He handed Hikaru some sheet music written for bass guitar. 

Hikaru grinned as he looked over the notes, already imagining the tune in his head. “Nice!”

“Can we try it out after dinner?” Inoo’s hands shuffled through his own music pages, trying to get each one in order. 

“Of course,” he smiled.

Hikaru pulled out some ingredients to cook something quick while a comfortable silence settled over the kitchen. His mind wandered back to three months ago when he’d lost his memory. He thought about the strange dream world sometimes, wondered what happened to the inhabitants there. The clock keeper, the boat builder, the cliff climber, the mechanics, the operator. They all had shown him many different things to experience. He wouldn’t forget them or the things they’d taught him. 

He paused as he chopped up some vegetables and turned to look at Inoo sitting at the table. “Did you know that you can slow down time but you can’t stop it?” 

Inoo looked up from his music to meet his eyes. He tilted his head ever so slightly as he tried to figure out what Hikaru meant. But then his lips curled up into a bright smile. “Then I suppose we should enjoy all the time we have together.” 

Hikaru knew that he would not forget Inoo Kei again. He would hold on to each of these memories, each little moment, as they moved forward with their lives together. He would try his best to keep the hands of the clock moving in sync, in a steady unending rhythm. 

He would be persistent.

**Author's Note:**

> Chinen's role as the operator was based on [this](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh1bob_the-colgate-comedy-hour-with-abbott-costello-phone-call_fun/) Abbott and Costello sketch. Yes, I'm easily amused. 
> 
> And please check out all of the ateliers fics!


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